“You had your chance to choose,” the voice says, “now it’s Rachel’s turn.”
Rachel and I exchange a look. I put everything I can into it, trying to get two years of courtship and six years of marriage into one look.
I say, “Rachel, you know I love you. I just proved it to you by picking you. You’ve cheated? Okay, fine, so have I. Let’s start fresh. Let’s end this shit and go home.”
Rachel nods back at me and addresses the voice, “I don’t have to go through all the motions like we did last time. For me, it’s a simple decision. I choose Kevin. Do whatever you want to Sam.” I literally fall to the floor. I hold my head with both hands, squeezing hard to keep my brains from exploding. “You’re certain?” the voice says. “Positive,” Rachel says. “Sorry, Sam. We had some good moments. I’ll try to remember them.”
I scramble to my feet, make my way to the wall closest to her, and place my hand on the Lucite. “Rachel!” I shout. I make a show of removing my wedding ring, just as she’d done moments earlier. I kiss it and put it back on. “We’re married,” I say. “We’re soul mates!”
It seems I’ve gotten through to her. Rachel looks long and hard at her wedding ring. She slowly spins it around her finger a couple of times, and I try to imagine what thoughts are playing in her head. I get my answer when she removes her wedding ring, kisses it, walks to her camping toilet, opens the lid, and tosses it in.
“I belong to Kevin now,” she says. “Everything I am, everything I have, is his.”
And that’s when it hits me: all this time, the one piece of the puzzle I have never been able to understand has just fallen into place. The white bra with the “K” and “V” that had me so freaked out, it doesn’t stand for Karen Vogel. It stands for Kevin Vaughn. The voice says, “Sam, would you like to have a chance to meet Kevin?” “Fuck you!” I say. “Fuck you all.”
Our captor must have the green tarp rigged to an electronic device because it falls away on its own. Kevin Vaughn and I stare at each other. He’s about to say something, but Rachel interrupts him, saying, “Don’t feel like you have to speak to him, Kevin. Just take me home now, honey, okay?”
I look in disbelief at the guy in the black Armani suit with the feathered, white-silk pinstripe. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt and a fiery red tie with a matching pocket square. I look at his sissy haircut and sissy shoes and say, “Is that how it’s going to be, Kevin? You’ve been sneaking around fucking my wife for six months, and now you’re going to what—move into my house, set up housekeeping with a woman who killed her own sister? A woman who, without a second thought, sentenced her own husband to die?”
Kevin clears his throat and says, “I think when you say it that way, you’re putting the worst possible face on the situation.”
“Is that how they teach you to talk in advertising school?”
Rachel says, “He’s not in the advertising business, you buffoon. I am. For your information, he owns a fifty- million-dollar company. How he talks is none of your business.”
“What type of product were you working on with him, some new type of condom?”
“Don’t be a sore loser, Sam.”
“I saw a photograph of you on our kitchen floor. You were lying there in your bra and panties with a bondage ball in your mouth.” She thinks about it a moment. Then she smiles. “So?” “What was that, some sort of sex game?” “What’s the matter, Sam, you jealous?” “Maybe,” I say. “But I couldn’t help notice the picture was taken right around the time your sister was murdered.” “You’re insane. Stop, Sam. You’re embarrassing yourself.” I look at Kevin. “You took that picture?” Kevin tilts his head slightly and shrugs. “Asshole.”
The voice says, “Sam, thank you for the input. Kevin, looks like you win the prize: freedom and the lovely Rachel. I know it was an inconvenience, putting you in the cage, but at least you learned that Rachel’s love for you is sincere.”
The voice continues, “Sam, we’re sorry it wasn’t much of a contest. We can’t begin to understand how you must feel. But it’s all water under the bridge at this point, yes?”
“Not quite,” I say. “I’ve got a question for you, you vomitous piece of shit.”
The voice says, “We don’t believe ‘vomitous’ is a word. However, we’re beginning to see Rachel’s point about you being a sore loser.”
“I don’t care what you think about me,” I say. “But how do you expect to activate the codes? You’ve only got the first half of the sequence.”
The voice says, “Not true. We’ve always had the second sequence. They’re embedded in your computer.”
“That’s not possible,” I say.
“Think about it,” the voice says. “During the past two years, every one of your clients has accessed some of their money at least once. You’re an honest man, Sam. You set up your program in such a way that you couldn’t see your clients’ codes. But we’re not so honest. We hacked into your system and found them—I won’t try to explain how. But we had a problem: the accounts were all numbered. We were kidding about the codes. We never needed them; we had them all along. What we needed were the legal names on the accounts. Without those, we couldn’t access the funds.” My head is swimming, but my captor’s voice sounds confident. “So that’s it,” I say. “It is.” “What happens now?”
“We’ll kill you quickly. With all the twists and turns that have been going on, Rachel and Kevin are going to want to make sure you’re dead. After that, we’ll reunite the happy couple and bring down the curtain on this play.” “Karen’s getting a big cut?” I ask, wondering why that thought popped into my head. Rachel muttered, “I knew she was a whore. But I suppose she earned it, having to fuck you.” “Are you in on it too, Rachel?” I say. “Are you getting a cut?”
The voice says, “Rachel is not a party to this drama. She only gets to live, along with whatever she inherits from your estate.”
“You sound awfully smug,” I say. “If you can’t access the money at the last minute, you’re going to wish you’d kept me alive.”
“Sam,” the voice says, “from the moment you gave us the names, my associates have been working furiously.
